Trump, Corbyn and the return of the oldest hatred

Deborah Lipstadt, the American scholar whose victory over the English holocaust denier David Irving in a libel case was made into a film starring Rachel Weisz, says progressive parties are refusing to acknowledge antisemitism within their ranks even as they condemn bigotry on the right.

Professor Lipstadt will tell Sydney audiences at the Antidote festival this weekend that she considers the British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to be just as antisemitic a figure as US President Donald Trump at a time when anti-Jewish sentiment is rising around the world.

In her most recent book, Antisemitism: Here and Now, Professor Lipstadt traces a dramatic rise in antisemitism since about 2000 with a particular uptick since 2016.

“I don’t know if there are more antisemites in the world now than there used to be, but today they feel emboldened,” said Professor Lipstadt who is the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Georgia.

“They feel emboldened because of leaders like Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Viktor Orban [of Hungary], Salvini [of Italy], Bolsonaro [of Brazil], who telegraph the message that this sort of behaviour is OK, that it is OK to let your hatreds show, that political correctness is weak, that if you don’t like someone you can go beat them up.”

She says the rise in antisemitism comes from both the left and the right, arguing the stereotypes in which they trade and the impact of their bigotry is the same. Professor Lipstadt says far-right bigots tend to “own” and even celebrate their hatred while progressives often deny prejudice exists within their ranks.

Read the article by Nick O’Malley in The Age.